Last month I wrote about how students fool themselves into thinking they have learned concepts when they really haven’t. This month I focus on how faculty can fool themselves into thinking that they are teaching effectively when their students aren’t really learning.
4 Responses
Thanks for your insights tying teaching effectiveness to learning principles—- the value of this alignment cannot be overstated.
Every semester I teach 1 or 2 large (160-student) classes for non-majors: Introduction to Film and Media Studies, a course that students generally take to cover a “general education” requirement. Because it is not a “majors” class and because of the topic (watching movies–cool), a large number of students expect the course to be an “easy A.” I originally taught this course (in smaller sections of 35) as a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington. In the fall semesters a professor would lecture for 2 classes and we would do the Friday discussion sections. But in the spring, the GTAs would teach their own 35-student course. This was exceptional training for my post-grad school teaching, which I have now done for 23 years.
I am new to the “Teaching Professor,” but I’m already finding the articles very useful. This article lines up very well with my own experiences. For example, I teach an editing rule called the 180-degree rule (a basic rule of shooting and editing) which is somewhat complex, requiring diagrams, etc. I show it on PPT slides with the written definition and diagrams. I act it out in class as though we were shooting a Western gun battle, using student volunteers as the person I face-off with (I’m the Sheriff) and the camera person. I show them new diagrams. I show a video that comes with the textbook and provides a much more complex example from Hitchcock’s Vertigo. I do all of this on different days in different weeks–as relevant for the film in question. Finally, I do a group activity where I show them a clip (twice) and ask them to recreate the diagram for this particular clip. Obviously, I feel that I really cover this topic thoroughly. Ultimately, I provide a new diagram on the exam and ask them–in a multiple-choice question–to figure out where the 180 line is (the axis of action) and then say which camera positions fit with this rule. Each semester, somewhere around 50-60% of the students get this right. This is definitely a case of believing that thorough coverage is the same as achieving student learning. So, OK, I’m going to rethink it AGAIN. Thanks for your thoughtful essay and the push in the right direction.
Katrina: Ah, film studies! Your comment resonates with me. I approached the 180-rule in a similar way when I taught—physically demoing it, drawing it on the board, showing and reshowing clips galore (“OK, let’s try to find the axis of action here”—cue the chestburster scene from Alien). I’d be so satisfied with my explanations, which couldn’t have been better; surely the rule would be burned into students’ consciousness. And yet . . .
Hi Katrina,
I have the same issue with General Psychology. Many students come to the class thinking it will just be “common sense” and an “easy A.” Always a shock when about a third of the class make D’s and F’s on the first exam. I don’t know anything about the 180-degree rule, but I think every field has concepts that are just difficult for students to grasp. I have senior psych majors who still have trouble distinguishing independent and dependent variables, and thinking positive correlations are stronger than negative ones. Thanks for your feedback.